Thursday, September 1, 2011

NEX-5 Back to Sony for Repair

Actually, there is nothing really wrong with my NEX-5, in terms of operations and functionality.  It's purely a cosmetic problem: the anti-reflective coating on the rear LCD has all but rubbed off except near the center of the screen.  It looks really disgusting when the screen is turned off although it's not as bad when it's on.  I don't think it's acceptable that the coating comes off so easily.  Sony should either provide a glass cover for the LCD screen or make the coating stay on more permanently.

At the moment, I don't know if it's even covered under warranty until the technician has a look at it.  This is the first time I have had to use Sony's customer service and so far it's been very positive.  The reception and the facility is excellent (although it's hard to find the customer service department.)  I was quoted a turn around time of 1 to 10 business days, depending on availability of parts.  This is a far cry from the Canon service when I regularly had to waiting at least two weeks and most often four weeks.

When the screen is fixed, I will put on a screen protector first thing.

On a side note, I have been really going gaga over the NEX-7.  Today I read the image comparison of the A65 (version 1.02 firmware) versus the the A850 on a Chinese site and I am really impressed with the high ISO performance of the 24MP APS-C sensor on the A65 (and the A77, NEX-7).  Too bad these are all jpg images but the improvement is like night and day in terms of noise reduction, especially chroma noise.  Given the translucent mirror that causes a 1/3 EV light loss on the A65, the NEX-7 image should actually be marginally better.  If the final image quality of the NEX-7 is similar to what I see on the A65, I will not hesitate to buy NEX-7 as soon as it hits the dealers' shelves.

Skylon Tower in the distance, Niagara Falls -- Sony NEX-5 & 18-55mm kit lens.

5 comments:

  1. Sony's service locally is excellent. I had my A33 in a few weeks ago for a major failure (the camera had a sensor/circuitry failure) and it was back in a week and a half with most of the guts replaced. Quite happy with them due to that.

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  2. @Adam: Thanks for sharing your story with Sony repair. That's encouraging. I also have excellent experience with Panasonic repairs. Hopefully don't need to use the customer service again.

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  3. Hey, I just have a "random" question, but I hope you can help me. I bought the Nex-5 a few days ago and since I have a couple of Konica Hexanon AR lenses at home I decided to also buy an adapter. But it doesn't seem to work? All I get is a message saying "Cannot recognize lens. Attach it properly."
    What am I doing wrong? Or did I just buy a crappy adapter? :(

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  4. @Mel: you need to enable the "release shutter without lens" (or something similar) option in the menus. Sorry I don't have the camera with me to give you specific steps, but it's in the menu. Good luck!

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  5. Thanks! Totally working now!

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